Recently Albert Brecht alerted us to a new American Bar Foundation study
of lawyering skills, including the sorry (for us) conclusion that lawyers
surveyed in 1991 placed a lower value on legal research skills than those
surveyed in the mid-70s.
This month's ABA Journal reports on the same study: Anne Stein, Job
Hunting? Exude Confidence, ABA J., Nov. 1993, at 40. The ABA Journal
refers to the same results that Brecht did:
"only 8 percent of recent graduates ranked computer legal
research as extremely important and 17 percent deemed library research to
be extremely important."
"While [Gary] Fairchild [a Chicago attorney asked to comment on the
survey findings] said associates today are expected to conduct
comprehensive legal research, that function also is being handled more by
others, including outside services and paralegals. And most large law
firms also have an excellent inventory of legal research, so associates
don't have to start from scratch."
What caught my eye in the article was a sidebar, "Skills Needed by
New Lawyers -- Hiring Partners' Opinions." 17 skills are listed, with
two columns for "Should be Brought to Job" and "Should Be Developed in
Practice." 92% of hiring partners think "Library legal research skills"
should be brought to the job; 9% say the skills should be developed in
practice. (The fine print says the percentages may not add up to 100%
because of rounding.) 84% say "Computer legal research skills" should be
brought to the job; 16% say they should be developed in practice.
It seems that if we want something to encourage our students to
pay attention to legal research, we shouldn't say too much about the
recent graduates' view that legal research isn't important. Instead we
should emphasize that hiring partners want new associates to come
to the job with well-developed research skills.
=====Mary Whisner, Head of Reference======================
=====Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington======
=====whisner@u.washington.edu=============================
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